The present invention relates to Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs). VLANs allow multiple community groups to coexist within one bridge. A bridging community is identified by its VLAN ID. As described in IEEE 802.1q standard, if a system that supports VLANs receives a frame from the LAN, the frame will only be admitted to a LAN which belongs to the same community. A disadvantage of the VLAN standard 802.1q is that it does not support interactions over Wide Area Networks (WANs). It is desired to have a VLAN supported over a wide area network because it would allow the logical grouping of resources between a customer premise equipment (CPE) location and a point of presence (POP) location.
For this reason, it is desired to have systems and apparatus that support VLANs over wide area networks.